When a man

and social life to the throne of divine righteousness and truth. takes an oath in the name of God, he at once humbles and ennobles himself thereby. He humbles himself, in that he takes his place among a race of fallen and false-hearted men; among men hateful and hating one another; deceitful and deceiving one another. And he ennobles himself, in that he acknowledges his evil nature and kinship, and at the same time seeks divine help, and promises, with God's help, to speak only what is true, and to do only what is right. An oath accordingly, in the mouth of a devout juror, is nothing less than an act of divine worship. It turns a court of justice for the time into a church, and elevates its solemn procedure into an earthly figure and forecast of the day of judgment.

But we are not left to our own reasonings to guide and vindicate our practice in this matter of oaths. The Scriptures afford us endless examples, and some of them examples of the most solemn kind, of this method of ascertaining and reassuring the doubtful and anxious mind. At the very opening of the Hebrew history, Jehovah Himself swears by His own awful Name that He will perform to His people such and such things that confessedly lie beyond the pale of past experience and future likelihood. And when the things so promised were actually accomplished, they were thus celebrated in a psalm: "O ye seed of Abraham His servant; ye children of Jacob His children: remember the covenant made with Abraham, and His oath unto Israel; He confirmed the same to Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant. Again: "Jehovah hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever, after the order of Melchizedek." And again: "For men verily swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is an end of all strife. Wherefore God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of salvation the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath." And our Lord also, when put on oath before the high priest, took the adjuration as made under the law, and thus both recognized and established the lawfulness and propriety of the judicial custom. All which is surely sufficient to disprove the somewhat fanatical position that oaths are unlawful; that judicial swearing is a breach of the third commandment.

But it will to a certainty occur to some readers to say at this point, What then is to be made of our Lord's words in the Sermon on the Mount, "I say unto you, Swear not at all: neither by heaven; for it is God's throne: nor by the earth; for it is His footstool: but let your communication be Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil"? That is a most instructive example of our Lord's popular teaching, but it has little or nothing to do with the matter in hand. He is here dealing with one of the most common vices among His fellow-countrymen. The whole sermon, and eminently this part of it, is directed against the perversions and exaggerations, the glosses and refinements under which it may almost be said the moral law lay buried in our Lord's day; and hence the paradoxical and startling words He sometimes makes use of, as if just to set men to think what the law of God really is, and what obedience to it really implies. And accordingly our Lord is not so much dealing in the passage quoted with the legal practice of courts of justice, or even with the solemn assurances exchanged between man and man among the important concerns of daily life, as with the too familiar and irreverent use of God's name and attributes in their common conversation. And besides, the casuistical teaching of the ecclesiastical schools had laid down a mass of entangling, vexatious, and demoralizing rules, measuring out the degrees of responsibility and solemnity that attached to this and that form

of oath. Swearing by heaven meant so much; swearing by the temple meant so much; swearing by one thing you were not absolutely bound to keep your word; while swearing by another kept you firm,-all this was sapping the foundations of truth and reverence in the land, and it was against all such rabbinical glosses and popular abuses of the third commandment that our Lord thus emphatically protested.

The third commandment requireth the holy and reverent use of God's names, etc." Men do not begin by intending to dishonour God; but they are afraid of the ridicule of others; they are ashamed of appearing religious, and thus they are led to pretend that they are worse than they really are... They think contemptuously of God's ministers, sacraments, and worship; they slight His word, rarely looking into it, and never studying it. Thus they are in heart infidels; though they may not formally be such, and may attempt to disguise their own unbelief under pretence of objecting to one or other of the doctrines or ordinances of religion. And should a time of temptation come, when it would be safe to show themselves as they really are, they will almost unawares throw off their profession of Christianity, and join themselves to the scoffing world" (Newman).

forbiddeth all profaning-This commandment among other things denounces the sinful and degrading habit of profane cursing and swearing. It is distressing to think of the hold this coarse and vulgar habit has taken of certain classes of the people. You can scarcely pass a field in seed-time or harvest, you will not walk far along any frequented highway without hearing men uttering savage bursts of cursing at the mute creatures God has given them to assist them in their work, and even at the very implements they hold in their hands. In every knot of workmen there are usually some whose mother-tongue is blasphemy, whose mouth is filled with cursing and bitterness. And sometimes seriously-minded men, such is the strength of example, or of an early bad habit, will be surprised into this lamentable language, and that long after they have begun to set a watch on the door of their lips. Peter's explosion in the palace of the high priest is no doubt an example of the long survival of an early evil habit. "Once," says Bunyan, in his Grace Abounding, "when I was in the height of vanity, yet hearing one to swear that was reckoned for a religious man, it had so great a stroke upon my spirit that it made my heart to ake.' We have reason to be thankful that this sinful and indecent habit has almost entirely disappeared from among educated men. For there are certain kinds of historical and social literature that survive to show us how common and almost universal this abominable practice was at one time even among the more cultivated classes of society. Addressing working men in the twentieth letter of Fors Clavigera, Mr. Ruskin says: "I wish you to think over the meaning of this habit of yours very carefully with me. I call it a habit of yours, observe, only with reference to your recent adoption of it. You have learned it from your superiors; but they, partly in consequence of your too eager imitation of them, are beginning to mend their manners. And first, it is necessary you should understand the difference between swearing and cursing, vulgarly so often confounded. They are entirely different things; the first is invoking the witness of a spirit to an assertion you make, the second is invoking the assistance of a spirit to a mischief you wish to inflict. When ill-educated and ill-tempered people clamorously confound the two invocations, they are not, in reality, either cursing or swearing, but merely vomiting empty words indecently. True

cursing and swearing must always be distinct and solemn." And Dr. Newman calls all this kind of language a sort of vocal worship of the evil one, to which he listens with especial satisfaction. He is a master who allows himself to be served without trembling. He goes to and fro upon the earth, and walks up and down in it, hearing and rejoicing in that light and profane talk which is his worship."

or abusing of anything whereby God maketh himself known. The Bible word blasphemy is just Greek for this which is forbidden in this commandment. And Bengel excellently defines blasphemy thus: "Blasphemy is committed when (1) anything unworthy of God is attributed to Him; (2) when things worthy of God are denied to Him; (3) when the incommunicable attributes of God are attributed to others."

God will not suffer them to escape his righteous judgment. "Jehovah alone, according to the ancient constitution, was King in Israel, so that the crime of high treason could only be committed in respect of Him, and as the ten commandments would lead us to expect, the penalty for blaspheming His name was death. The book of Leviticus (xxiv.) relates how on one occasion a semi-Israelite in a brawl reviled and cursed HIS NAME, and how the community, shocked at the unlooked-for event, sought counsel of the oracle, and how this commanded the man to be stoned" (Ewald, Antiquities).

USES.-I. The holy and reverent use of God's name "implies right faith to call upon Him as He Is; right trust in Him, leaning upon Him; right devotion, calling upon Him as He has appointed; right life, ourselves who call upon Him being, or becoming by His grace, what He wills" (Pusey on Joel ii. 32).

2.

Whenever you hear the name of God mentioned, accustom yourselves to make a reverential pause, and form within yourselves an inward act of adoration, whereby you will be less apt to profane that venerable name in your more solemn addresses" (A Father's Advice to his Children). 3. Certain classes of men have already been named whose transgression of this commandment is notorious and scandalous. But this commandment, like all God's commandments, is very broad and very spiritual. And those who are farthest from the profane habits of speech referred to may fall into another profanity not less displeasing to God and injurious to themselves. There is a professional, a familiar, a conventional way of addressing God in prayer and praise, as also in speaking of Him in preaching and writing and debating, that is a grievous breach of this holy commandment. "We are apt to act toward God and the things of God as toward a mere system, a law, a name, a religion, a principle; not as against a Person, a living, watchful, present, prompt and powerful Eye and Arm. That all this is a great error is plain to all who study Scripture" (Newman).

QUESTIONS.

1. Comment on and illustrate Eccles. v. 1, 2, Draw out and justify the first clause of Confession xxii. 1.

2. And, indeed, oath-taking seems to imply, in its principle and origin, that other simple assertions are less sacred and binding, and thus indirectly to exercise an injurious influence upon the moral and religious notions of the people (Kalisch). Compare with the ‍teaching in the Commentary, and judge.

3. Explain, in view of the comments on this and on the first and second commandments, Matthew Henry's words: God is known by His name only, not by His nature or any similitude.

4. The formula, which embodies a dogma for the theologian, readily suggests an object for the worshipper. Ponder and explain.

Q. 57. Which is the fourth commandment?

A. The fourth commandment is, Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day : wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it."

Q. 58. What is required in the fourth commandment?

A. The fourth commandment requireth the keeping holy to God such set times as he hath appointed in his word; expressly one whole day in seven, to be a holy sabbath to himself.x

w Ex. xx. 8-11.

* Deut. v. 12: Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee. Ver. 13: Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work; Ver. 14 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work.

Remember the sabbath day-Sabbath is from the Hebrew Shabath, to rest, the day of rest, the Sabbath day. This name is the most ancient name of the day, and till New Testament times it was the only scriptural and ecclesiastical name. The Lord's day is the New Testament and Christian name (Rev. i. 10). In the early Church the weekly commemoration of Christ's resurrection was observed on that day, hence the Greek Church still calls it Resurrection day. Another familiar name of the day is Sunday. This is an astrological and heathen designation, and comes down from times when Sol or Apollo, the Sun god, was worshipped on that day of the week, just as Saturn was worshipped on Saturday and the Moon on Monday. The Puritans and Presbyterians tried hard to get this pagan title removed from the first day of the week, but in this as in many other things they were overborne. In their own Confessions and Catechisms, however, they use the only defensible names, Christian Sabbath or Lord's day.

It

The Sabbath day is the oldest religious institution in the world. existed long ages before the Mosaic legislation, into which it was afterwards incorporated. Baptism and the Lord's Supper, circumcision and the Passover, public worship, nay, the Holy Scriptures themselves, all these ordinances and possessions are ancient and venerable, but none of them all can compare with the Sabbath day for hoary antiquity. It is the noble and beautiful representation of the most ancient page of Scripture, a representation, in Ewald's

words, of " unsurpassable truth," that the first morning that rose on Adam and Eve was the morning of the Sabbath day. And in spite of the fall, the Sabbath has kept its place among mankind as one of the two sweet relics of Eden, and is week by week sent down among us as an earnest of heaven, a foretaste of the rest that remains for the people of God. The second great epoch of sabbatical development and legislation was in the time of Moses. Standing at the head of human history and looking down the long vista, we hardly ever, even among the most darkened nations, lose sight of a Sabbath day. But it is only at the time of the exodus that the Sabbath becomes a permanent national and ecclesiastical ordinance, a political and religious institution of first-rate importance.

Sinai was not the birth-place of the Sabbath day. The law of the Sabbath as it was published in the fourth commandment was not a new thing on the earth, any more than the law of reverence for the name of God, or the law commanding honour to parents. The law of the Sabbath, like the laws of worship and parental honour, was rather a reinforcement and republication of a law that had been written on the human heart from the beginning. The Sabbath was first appointed by the Creator of mankind, and it was issued anew by Him when He became the Redeemer and Lawgiver of Israel. And within this holy field of time, within and around this hallowed day, all the holiest practices of religion, and all the best blessings of national, domestic, and individual life gathered in Israel. By this commandment a space was cleared in the daily life of that ancient people for the study and pursuit of divine things, and among all the debts that modern Christendom owes to ancient Israel, and they are many and irrequiteable, after Christ Himself and the Holy Scriptures, the Sabbath day is the greatest.

And

It is well known that the Hebrew Sabbath began at sunset on Friday, and ended at sunset on Saturday. And from the Holy Scriptures themselves, as well as from the expository and ecclesiastical writings of the Jews, we gather a pretty full acquaintance with the habits of Sabbath observance that obtained among that people. Perfect rest from all manual and mental toil was the original and fundamental idea of the institution. The Sabbath was literally and universally the day of quiet and repose. to signalize and fix that idea in every mind, the commandment became unusually explicit and minute. "The seventh day is the rest of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work: thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter: thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates." And though troublesome and vexatious rules about this and that personal and domestic habit rose up among the later Jews, still this matter of rest was and is to them and to us the fundamental law of the Sabbath day. But it did not follow that this weekly vacation from ordinary labour was to be left void of all occupation. The law of holy rest did not leave the day open to be wasted in sloth and idleness. Indolence of body and vacancy of mind are not the divine rest designed for the physical, intellectual, and spiritual natures of man. And hence it was that in Israel, the Sabbath, without ceasing to be a day of real repose, became at the same time a day of special occupation with divine things. On the Sabbath the daily sacrifices were doubled in the tabernacle and temple. On the Sabbath the priests made ready the new display of shewbread, changing last week's preparation, and setting forth the new service upon the sacred table. that day also the new relays of priests relieved the exhausted occupants of the holy office the refreshed and recruited functionaries commenced their

On